Philippi Covered Bridge

The oldest and longest covered bridge still in use on a federal highway in the United States, built in 1852. The bridge was the site of the first land battle of the Civil War on June 3, 1861. Nearby, the Barbour County Historical Museum houses the Philippi Mummies, two bodies preserved in 1888 by Graham Hamrick using a patented process.

The Philippi Covered Bridge spanning the Tygart Valley River is the oldest and longest covered bridge in West Virginia, and it was the site of the first land battle of the American Civil War. Built in 1852 by master builder Lemuel Chenoweth, the two-lane bridge was an engineering marvel of its era -- a 285-foot double-barreled covered structure that served as a vital crossing point for commerce and travel in Barbour County. Chenoweth could not have known that within a decade, his bridge would become a focal point of national history and a place where the dead would linger for generations.

On June 3, 1861, Union forces under Colonel Benjamin F. Kelley launched a surprise dawn attack on Confederate troops encamped at Philippi. The assault, later called the 'Philippi Races' because the Confederates fled in such disarray, was the first organized land battle of the Civil War. Both Union and Confederate troops crossed the covered bridge during the engagement, and it was the first bridge in the conflict to be captured by either side. After the battle, Union troops used the bridge as a barracks, sleeping on its wooden deck within walls that had absorbed the echoes of gunfire and the boots of fleeing men.

The battle also produced a grim medical distinction. James Edward Hanger, a Confederate soldier, was struck by a cannonball during the engagement and became the first amputee of the Civil War. Hanger's leg was removed in a nearby church, and he later went on to found the Hanger Prosthetics company, which still operates today. The bridge that witnessed the beginning of four years of amputation and slaughter across the American landscape carries the weight of that first terrible cut.

The covered bridge has endured its own share of violence and disaster. In 1989, an arsonist set fire to the structure, severely damaging its historic timbers. The community rallied to rebuild, restoring the bridge to its 1852 appearance using Chenoweth's original construction techniques. But fires that destroy and rebuild sacred places often intensify their paranormal character -- the disruption of a structure so deeply connected to traumatic history can, according to paranormal theory, release energies that had been contained within the original materials.

Local legends have accumulated around the bridge over the decades. The most persistent involves a story, almost certainly apocryphal, that President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis were seen meeting secretly inside the covered bridge late in the war to discuss peace terms. A small boy was said to have witnessed the encounter. While historians dismiss this as folklore, the legend speaks to the bridge's symbolic power -- a place of crossing, of connection between opposing sides, of meetings that should not have happened and may still be happening outside the reach of the living.

The bridge's interior is a darkened corridor of heavy timbers and wooden planking that creates its own atmosphere, particularly at night. The covered design that protects the structure from weather also creates an enclosed space where sounds are amplified and shadows are absolute. Visitors have reported hearing footsteps on the wooden deck when no one else is present, the creak of timbers that seems to respond to movement rather than wind, and the unmistakable sensation of being watched from the shadows at either end of the tunnel-like structure.

The Philippi Covered Bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark and continues to carry vehicular traffic on US Route 250. It is one of the only covered bridges in the United States still in active use for automobile traffic, and drivers who cross it pass through the same enclosed space where Union troops slept, Confederate troops fled, and the first land battle of America's bloodiest war began.